The full poll results for December will be released on the website tomorrow, but if you’ve missed any of the results so far, the press releases are up on our website here.
A couple of tidbits before the full poll comes out tomorrow:
Generic legislative ballot is back to a 3 point Democratic advantage after Republicans took a 1 point lead last month.
56% of North Carolinians say that the state is headed in the wrong direction. This has been fairly consistent over the last 4 months or so.
Improve the economy/create jobs continues to be the only issue out there that voters want addressed. 55% say it is the most important issue, followed by hold down taxes/spending at 14% and reduce health care costs at 10%.
This month we asked about the supposedly dreaded “v-word” (vouchers) in a very straightforward question — do you support or oppose giving parents vouchers to send their child to any school they choose. 67% of voters supported vouchers. Only 24% opposed. Among African Americans, the support goes up to 72%.
It doesn’t matter how you word the tax “reform” proposals being debated by the General Assembly, voters don’t like taxing services. In prior polls we had asked if voters supported or opposed reducing tax rates but extending taxes to things like auto repair, home repair, etc. This month we changed the wording on the question so that the tax rate reductions were the last thing respondents heard — “support or oppose extending sales tax to auto repair, home repair, etc. but reduce overall rate of sales and income taxes.” And guess what? Voters still don’t like it. 52% were opposed.
Again, full poll results tomorrow on the website.
Good to see Sen. Tony Rand got that little annoyance over the accusations of insider trading cleared up.
Nothing like an independent review of your actions by your business partner, personal accountant, Treasurer for your campaign committee and the person you put in charge of running the Department of Transportation.
The report was commissioned by the company’s Special Investigation Committee, which is headed by Lyndo Tippett, the former secretary of the N.C. Department of Transportation and Rand’s personal accountant.
Asked how the investigation could be considered independent when it was led by people so close to him, Rand said the integrity of Tippett and Terry is beyond question.”They are strong-minded, strong-willed, independent individuals,” Rand said.
The guy who took orders from you on how to run DOT for eight years is an “independent individual”?
If you believe that, you probably believe that OJ is still looking for the “real killer.”
Wow, just when you thought Gov. Bev Perdue’s hypocrisy on releasing inmates from prison couldn’t get any worse, it does.
So despite her very public, poll number pandering position on keeping some felons sentenced to life in prison in the 1970s locked up, Perdue’s actions continue to show she feels otherwise.
On August 28, 2009, Gov. Perdue signed into law two bills (SB 488 and SB 489) which collectively slash the sentences of many future rapists, murderers and other felons.
Now, WTVD catches Perdue throwing a Christmas winter solstice party at the Governor’s Mansion for the inmates that are assigned there on work release.
Yep, just one day after looking straight into TV cameras across North Carolina and professing that:
“How would you feel if you go home tonight and next door to you is the house where these folks are gonna be living?” she said. “How would you feel for your children? Is that the way we want to do things in North Carolina?”
She then attends a party that “included Reginald Patterson, who is serving life in prison for murder. There were nine other convicted killers and four armed robbers –a total of 17 prison inmates invited to the party, because they work at the governor’s mansion.”
So it’s not OK for some to rejoin society after serving 40 years in prison, but it’s perfectly fine to party with others and to cut the sentences of future felons.
Only in Bev’s world.
Could a populist idea from the 1990s come back into debate today as a way to clean up corruption in government? According to our latest poll, yes.
73 percent of voters say they support term limits for members of the General Assembly. And when asked an open-ended question on what’s the best way to clean up corruption in North Carolina, the single answer most given was — term limits.
However, they do not want to go back to the pre-1976 limitation on the governor only serving one term. 49 percent oppose changing the limit back from 2 terms to 1 term.
Full release and crosstabs here.
In advance of the Wake County School Board meeting scheduled for later today, we went in the field yesterday with a flash poll to gauge Wake County voters’ opinions of the more contentious issues. And the results were pretty surprising. Those issues we thought were supposed contentious really aren’t. The voters are loud and clear — they don’t want mandatory year round and they don’t want busing for diversity.
Do you support the current school board policy of assigning some students to mandatory year round schools or should parents be given a choice between sending their child to a school that is year round or traditional calendar? You will have the choice to be undecided or have no opinion.
Support current policy for year round – 18.1%
Think parents should be given a choice – 74.9%
No opinion – 7.1%
Do you support or oppose the school board’s current policy of assigning students to schools based on achieving diversity, instead of sending students to the school closest to their home? You will also have the choice of being undecided.
Support the policy – 22.0%
Oppose the policy – 68.3%
No opinion – 9.7%
These positions are held across racial, political and every demographic group we polled. In fact, those with children or grandchildren in Wake County Public Schools feel even more strongly in their opposition to the old school board’s status quo.
Do not be fooled by the intensity of the rhetoric coming from the vocal left. They are nothing more than a loud but very small minority on this issue. An overwhelming majority of Wake County voters want the school board to make changes.
Full press release, crosstabs are here.
President Barack Obama’s favorability in North Carolina hit a new low in our poll this month with less than half of voters having a favorable opinion of him. It now stands at 48% favorable, 38% unfavorable, down from a high of 64% the first time we asked in March of this year.
Gov. Bev Perdue’s campaign committee disclosed late last week five additional airplane flights then then Lt. Gov. took but were not previously disclosed on campaign finance reports. This report continues to raise more questions than answers about how many more flights are out there that have not been disclosed and why is it so hard for the committee to come clean on its expenditures.
According to the Perdue Committee these flights weren’t disclosed due to “software problems” in converting from one database to another. While this may be a plausible explanation, there appears to be some doubt to its validity as an excuse.
Four of the five new flights reported were provided by Raleigh attorney Terence McEnally, who stirred controversy back in 2006 by wanting to advertise his Hispanic-centric law firm by prominently flying the Mexican flag outside his downtown office space. McEnally also owns the Spanish-language newspaper La Conexcion.
Coincidentally, McEnally posted a classified ad offering to sell his airplane on Nov. 17, 2009, just one day before the Perdue Committee submitted the amended report to the State Board of Elections detailing his four prior unreported flights.
Was McEnally’s haste to sell his airplane one day before the report to the State Board of Elections just a coincidence, or was he trying to unload it before the questions would begin to be asked?
The other flight was claimed to be provided Mary Brinn, owner of Brinn Glass and Mirror, Inc. of New Bern. The flight expense credited to Ms. Brinn was dated 5/25/2006. However, according to corporate records filed with the NC Secretary of State’s office, Brinn did not live at the address claimed on the Perdue report until 2008. If this was just a simple database transition error as the Perdue Committee claims, why did it have the incorrect address listed for Mary Brinn?
Its strange that Perdue continues to hide behind the “computer glitch” excuse for the failure to disclose flights. Instead of making excuses, wouldn’t it just be best for everyone if she and her committee just admit that mistakes were made and come clean on all the flights Perdue took? Release the travel records and get ahead of the story. Instead she continues to look like a hypocrite by signing Executive Orders purportedly to improve governmental ethics, all the while hiding behind her own veil of deceit.
One of the more interesting findings of this month’s poll results on Perdue’s favorability is her relative weakness with members of her own party. So it has to be asked, could she be vulnerable to a primary challenge in 2012?
Let’s explore the evidence:
1. She’s already ticked off a big portion of the Democratic base vote (teachers and state employees) with her executive order that cut their pay by 0.5% — which now seems unnecessary since she had $150 million left in the State’s Rainy Day fund unspent. (Remember, cutting their only got the state $60 million).
2. Perdue’s favorability rating among Democrats dropped below 50% in June and has never recovered. In our December poll, it’s at 43%.
Perdue’s Favorability with Democrats:
3. Also in our December poll, we asked what is called a “hard re-elect” question. This is used to gauge a politicians core support. Basically, it asks would you vote for (Insert Politician X) regardless of who ran against them. When asked about Perdue more than half of Democrats (51%) said no, they wouldn’t vote to re-elect her regardless of the opponent. Only 28% say they would. So more than half of Democrats are open to another candidate.
So what would happen if a popular Democrat got in the race against her? What if Cal Cunningham runs a good race against Sen. Burr but loses in a squeaker? Or Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton? Could an untarnished Democrat give her a run for her money?
Or could she be vulnerable from a challenge from her left? She’s cut salaries of teachers and state employees, slashed funding for Medicaid and other social programs and passed a very regressive tax increase. The BlueNC crowd isn’t exactly enamored with her.
It would be interesting to see. The problem for Perdue is if she takes steps to rebuild her base, she runs the risk of further alienating everyone in the middle and right. Or she can keep trying to play it down the middle as she’s doing now and make everyone unhappy. That might work in negotiations, but it could be a death sentence in politics.
Despite the N&O’s assertion that Perdue is “winning over critics” the percentage of voters giving her a favorable opinion remains near her all time low. In fact, the percentage of voters giving her a favorable rating is down 5 percentage points this month. All that has changed with this poll is some of the unfavorables have moved to “no opinion.” That’s not exactly winning them over.
Judge for yourself:
Support for Obamacare continues to struggle in North Carolina according to our latest poll with only 40% supporting and 48% in opposition.
We’ve had the public opposed to the bill by an 8-10 point margin since September and it doesn’t seem much has changed despite all the rhetoric and debate on both sides.
The breakdown by party is pretty remarkable but almost as expected. Democrats support it (59-29), Republicans oppose it (13-77) and unaffiliateds are split evenly (41-42).
What stands out is the intensity gap between Republican opposition and Democratic support. 61 percent of Republicans “Strongly oppose” the measure, but only 39 percent of Democrats “Strongly support” it.
There is also a tremendous racial divide on the bill. Whites oppose it 27-58, while blacks overwhelmingly support it 85-10.
We also polled whether coverage for abortion should be provided in the health care bill and as can be imagined, the public isn’t for that at all. Only 24% support with 69% opposed.
Full press release and all the crosstabs and details here.